FROM

Veganism is about protecting the rights and interests of all sentient
beings. It is a vision of a new world, a non-violent world - or at least a
lot less violent world compared to what we have now. Veganism is peace,
co-operation, and community. Veganism is respect and responsibility.

We should begin to think about veganism in a new light. Rather than one
movement that seeks to forge alliance with others, veganism can be seen as
the vision that embraces all struggles for justice, opposes all oppression,
and liberates everyone. It is hard to think of any other idea that would
liberate more than veganism would.

Noticed how there seems to be some sort of slide away from veganism as
the established moral baseline of the animal advocacy movement lately? Maybe
corporate profits are down or something? Perhaps it is the remaining
importance of single-issues in campaigner’s minds? It is more likely,
however, a widespread failure to fully understand the potential of veganism
– or even know what it is.

A Recent Phenomenon

I went vegan in the late 1970s. I was very active throughout the 1980s,
heavily engaged in a variety of single-issue campaigns. I helped to begin a
number of “action groups” against individual laboratories, fur companies,
and the fur trade itself. I was the “press officer” for a number of
grassroots groups along the way.

I did radio interviews, press interviews, and appeared on TV a few times.
I’m sure it will be hard for 21st century animal advocates to appreciate
that, in all those campaigning years, I and many other spokespersons, rarely
talked about veganism, and we particularly failed to articulate vegan values
as our clear and central moral position on human-nonhuman relations.

We would tend to stick to the largely compartmentalised arguments against
factory farming, hunting, the fur trade, etc., and generally talk about
these forms of animal use in isolation. The word “vegan” would crop up, of
course, when some journalist asked us about our “diet” in the main, but it
wasn’t often a major feature of our fundamental claims-making. When we were
asked about veganism, however, we never “tactically” described ourselves as
vegetarians.

Having said that, I don’t remember mentioning veganism in the many, many,
press releases I composed in those days. Veganism just wasn’t at the
forefront of our single-issue minds – we were busy trying to win the
winnable, ban the bannable, and remove the bricks in the wall of “animal
cruelty” one by one. We did this as anti-vivisectionists, as anti-hunting
activists, as anti-animal circus campaigners, and so on: not, by and large,
as vegan animal rights advocates. Sad to say, we were probably instrumental
in the shame of reducing veganism to its dietary issues, something that
persists today. It does not help when vegans publish books like “Eat Like
You Care,” tending to limit the meaning of veganism to food choices and its
dietary component. Why not the more accurate and representative Live Like
You Care? Concerned people in the movement apparently feel the need to issue
warnings and reminders that veganism is far more than a diet virtually on a
daily basis. Veganism should never have been so reduced.

Moral Baseline

As many who read this blog know, I have always credited law professor
Gary Francione with being extremely influential in pushing veganism to the
centre of animal advocacy in the last 20 years or so. He wasn’t alone, of
course and, indeed, would write about himself in terms of being a vegetarian
as late as 1996; an indication of just how new the unequivocal vegan
baseline position is. Our 1980s claims-making in Britain would have been so
much altered had veganism been established as the moral baseline of the
animal advocacy movement much earlier. Most of us were vegans or living on a
100% plant-based diet, but we did not campaign for veganism. Had things been
different, we would have at the very least contextualised our single-issue
campaigning in the light of an overarching vegan vision of the future which
would seek to liberate all sentients and protect the planet. Single-issues
would have been “abolitionised,” as they still need to be today – for it
does not confuse members of the public to see particular types of animal use
presented as part of general vegan critique of use, power relations, and
oppression. Many modern-day animal advocates remain stubbornly wedded to
single-issues for a variety of reasons, and all in the face of persistent
attacks on SICs in recent years. Very many appear not persuaded that SICs
are harmful, or a diversion – nevertheless, they will openly talk about
veganism nowadays. However, not all animal advocates will…

So, Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad “V” Word?

When I say, “established as the moral baseline of the animal advocacy
movement,” I know that veganism has not actually been embraced by all. Many
vegan animal advocates still like to “play it safe” by employing the use of
terms like vegetarian (even when they apparently mean vegan), or veg,
veggie, and veg*n. This is most unfortunate in my view. What irks me most is
when vegan advocates are encouraged to “tactically” slide away from veganism
on the grounds that vegan is some sort of “scare word.”

One cannot help assuming that, often as not, there are “business” reasons
for presenting veganism as a scare word. Happily, many grassroots animal
advocates do not seem to find that it is – see this podcast on “vegan
information booths.” For national groups, on the other hand, especially
those with paid staff, they are on the constant lookout for more members and
financial supporters and, when they have them, their claims-making is based
on what the membership will tolerate - and therefore re-subscribe - while
they attempt to address the widest possible audience. Soon questions of, “is
this moral,” may take second place in favour of questions such as, “is it
good for membership recruitment and retention.”

Many people claim that vegetarianism is a “gateway” to veganism, citing
the fact that most current vegans were vegetarians first. On the other hand,
social networks are full of reports of regret from people saddened that they
did not go vegan as soon as they might; that, somehow, as vegetarians, they
were not aware of the realities of dairy and egg production, and had never
seen their vegetarianism as a particular form of animal use. Even if we were
to accept that vegetarianism is some “gateway” to veganism, there are
objections to vegans advocating for vegetarianism. First, no vegan should
suggest that using other sentient beings for any reason is morally
acceptable, even as a stepping-stone and, second, there are far more
vegetarians than vegans in the world (rather begging a question of the
“gateway” proposition) so vegans can let them push vegetarianism while they
concentrate on their own concerns. Someone has to be promoting vegan
philosophy if it is to be found on the other side of a gateway that
vegetarians eventually find, or are directed towards.

Some people seem to be currently suggesting that they failed to “go
vegan” due to the fact that some existing vegans are not very nice people,
and they dislike these people’s campaigning approach or advocacy style. This
is a shallow and irrational excuse: why continue to punish other animals by
using them on the grounds that some animal advocates are not particularly
pleasant? That is hardly the fault of other animals who are used by
vegetarians. While it is true that many report that they took 10 or 15 years
to finally go vegan, there is absolutely no necessity for a “go vegetarian
first” message to be promoted by vegans. Instead, such people can be
encouraged to be as vegan as they possibly can be given their own social
circumstances. However, to suggest that they may remain non-vegan for
year-upon-year because they have not liked some vegans, or the way some
vegans operate, is an incredible weak reason to continue to make other
sentient beings suffer and die.

Vegan consumerism

While plant-based products are vegan-friendly, that is not the same as
saying that they are vegan. The phrase, “is it vegan?” is misleading when
the question concerns an inanimate object like a food product. This phrase
should be recognised only as a form of convenient shorthand. Carrots may be
vegan-friendly but carrots themselves, of course, are not vegans. Some
carrots may not even be vegan-friendly, depending on how they were produced.
We may immediately think of the use of animal “manure,” or chemical
pesticides, at this point but we should also recognise that the philosophy
of veganism would not view anything as vegan-friendly if human producers
were harmed in the production process, or if environmental destruction is
intrinsic to the item in question. Many people make jokes about how social
media is being used by vegans to post picture after picture of the food they
are eating, or their new plant-based or animal-free purchases. Glossy vegan
publications promote innumerable new vegan goodies: happy smiling white
faces promoting the urgency of a buy, buy, buy culture to vegans. This is
“vegan porn” according to Steve Best in his Total Liberation talk in
Luxemburg in 2013 – see here for Best’s view that animal advocacy is
hindered by its narrow vision and thin politics, which leaves us small,
weak, and marginalised.

Of course the promotion of vegan goods has campaigning utility: whatever
you want, you can get a “vegan” version of it we say. The myth that being
100% plant-based is easy for everyone, everywhere, and all the time, also
has campaigning utility despite being totally wrong. However, if we are not
to further betray the principles of veganism, we need to move from vegan
consumption (VC) to critical veganism (CV). By asking more than, “is that
product entirely plant-based,” we soon see how palm oil is problematic, how
sugar is – how all cash crops are. Writing this a few days after Easter, I
was struck by the number of vegans falling over themselves to promote “vegan
chocolates” having seemingly made not the slightest attempt to discover the
production structures of different chocolate brands, thus ignoring the fact
that much chocolate is dripping with exploitation and rights violations as
child slaves are used on many coco plantations. Palm oil is certainly not
vegan-friendly in any serious sense of the term. Vegans cannot be friends
with a product that causes such devastation. We should not make the shallow
mistake of thinking that opposition to palm oil is about orang-utan “persons
of the forest” and only about orang-utans. A vegan critique of palm oil is
wider than that.

Not Alliance Politics but an All-Embracing Critical Veganism

Veganism is about protecting the rights and interests of all sentient
beings. It is a vision of a new world, a non-violent world - or at least a
lot less violent world compared to what we have now. Veganism is peace,
co-operation, and community. Veganism is respect and responsibility.

We should begin to think about veganism in a new light. Rather than one
movement that seeks to forge alliance with others, veganism can be seen as
the vision that embraces all struggles for justice, opposes all oppression,
and liberates everyone. It is hard to think of any other idea that would
liberate more than veganism would.

Bob Torres (Making a Killing: The Political Economy of Animal Rights),
and David Nibert (Animal Rights Human Rights: Entanglements of Oppression
and Liberation and Animal Oppression and Human Violence: Domesecration,
Capitalism, and Global Conflict) (and Steve Best) suggest to us that we
cannot get even close to what we want as vegans within the present social
and economic structure. A wider, more systemic vision of social change is
necessary if we are really serious about bringing about the liberation of
all animals, and determined to protect the environment.

This means that encouraging vegans to backslide on veganism now is
encouraging us to move in totally the wrong direction. “Tactical” vegetarian
advocacy is not going to achieve anything. That thinking is as redundant and
as short-sighted as thinking that vegan consumerism in some vegan capitalist
mode of production is possible.

This is not the time to turn away from veganism – this is the time to
explore its deep intersectional dimensions; its potential to be the
revolutionary idea that it really is.

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